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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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Beginning Struggle for Industrial Education 11 ties in the northeastern part of the state. It was organized in 1841 and by the next year had a membership of several hundred. At its fair held in the village of Aurora in October, 1842, from five to seven thousand people congregated for no other purpose than to witness the exhibition. At this time twenty-eight counties having more than two-fifths of the population of Illinois, were embraced within the limits of agricultural societies.7 An important project was begun at this time by the Union agricultural society: it was the permanent establishment of a farm paper, the Union Agriculturalist and Western Prairie Farmer. After 1842 the name was changed to .the Prairie Farmer, and as such it has flourished to the present day. Three years later an attempt was made to create the Illinois state agricultural society. The plan apparently was to transform the Sangamon county agricultural society into a state society. Sangamon county included the state capital, Springfield, and it was thought that when the legislature was in session the agricultural society could hold evening sessions and procure the attendance of the 117 farmer members of the legislature. as well as that of other men of note who would give addresses and confer high prestige upon the organization.8 In this plan they were frankly copying the "agricultural conversations'' of the New York and the Massachusetts societies. The state society, however, seems to have exhausted its energy in producing a constitution and electing officers. Through the ensuing years up to 1850 there was an earnest interest in agricultural education. I t was clear that a plan for such an education had to be formulated because the time was coming when people would demand that their sons be offered the opportunity to obtain wisdom of the soil. The Prairie Farmer was( constantly on the alert for practical proposals and one plan after another was brought from under the bushel and the light of earnest, intelligent criticism turned on it. Some proposals showed themselves not American, hence doomed to failure. Professor Ebenezer Emmons of Albany, New York, declared in the Prairie Farmer for June, 1849: "Certainly an American school 'Prairie Farmer, January, 1843. Wravrie Farmer, January, 1843.
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